INTERDISCIPLINARY HUMANITIES II: MEDIEVAL/EARLY MODERN
(HON 1050/1051/1053-01)
MWF 9:30-11:20, MWF 12:30-1:20, Honors Seminar Room

Dr. Scott Black
SAC 427
x94642
office hours: MW 3:00-4:15, and by appt.

Dr. Emmet McLaughlin
SAC 443
x97429
office hours:

Dr. Lauren Shohet
SAC 425
x96966
office hours: MW 11:30-12:20, and by appt.

DESCRIPTION: Interdisciplinary Humanities II examines key themes in the evolution of Western thought and society from the ninth century through the eighteenth. Our perspectives come from religious, cultural, and artistic movements, which we study in relation to their historical contexts. We will emphasize interpreting original texts in widely varying ways, with diverse disciplinary tools.

We touch on both strange and familiar aspects of European cultures of the past--the roots of our own. Among our questions will be: Are there different kinds of truth? What is the nature of religious faith? Are tradition and rationality mutually exclusive? What is tradition? How is it taught and learned, used and re-used, adapted and transformed? Is there a human nature? And if it exists is it good or evil? How do history, religion, and different forms of art interact with each other?

In the most general terms, this course is organized by questions about three kinds of relations: 1) relations of people to one another; 2) relations of people to God; 3) relations of a person to one’s self. Our course texts are based in different genres (such as novel, poem, treatise, meditation, opera, sculpture); genre organizes how our texts pose these questions and the answers they explore. Our course methodologies are based in different disciplines (theology, philosophy, history, literary studies, political science); discipline organizes how we investigate these questions and answers in different texts.

Classes will consist primarily of discussion based on assigned texts. In addition, we’ll take several field trips, visiting museums, attending concerts, watching films, and eating good things. Writing assignments will be frequent, ranging from informal daily journal writing through short papers to larger undertakings.

Students must register for all three sections.  Individual sections of the course may be used fulfill introductory requirements in the respective disciplines; one of the three sections must be used to fulfill the Core Humanities Seminar.

AIMS OF THE COURSE:

            --provide substantial engagement with a range of important theological, philosophical, and imaginative thinkers and works from the medieval, Renaissance, and Early-Modern eras.

            --develop your abilities to think about these texts in relation to disciplinary traditions, on the one hand (how our philosophers address one another, for example), and in ways that require students to transcend disciplinary boundaries, on the other (tying together different kinds of texts and artifacts as aspects of cultural history).

            --cultivate your abilities to think in flexible and nuanced ways about insoluble or perpetually vexing problems:  hard issues, ambiguous texts, contradictory notions.

--develop your acuity in working through alternative arguments from the same set of evidence.

--develop your abilities to set their own trenchant and penetrating questions about texts and issues.

--develop rigor of analytic responses—to primary texts, to artistic objects, to classmates’ arguments—offering a range of strategies for understanding difficult or unfamiliar styles of writing, for locating where a text or writer is coming from (who and what a text understands itself to address), for identifying fundamental assumptions underlying what texts explicitly say, and for thinking in sophisticated ways about relationships between writing and culture, and among strands of culture.

            --use writing as a tool for refining analysis, focusing particularly on cogency of interpretation, argumentative structure, flexibility of analysis, and clarity of prose.

READING. You are required to attend class every day, armed with a copy of the day’s readings and prepared to discuss the material assigned for that day. Additionally, for each unit, we will make some factual information available on the course website (primarily, historical context and analytic vocabulary).  This is material that we expect you to bring into class discussions and written work as needed, and this material will be included on exams.

WRITTEN WORK:     The course requires a range of written work.  As formal assignments, you will write 3 papers (each 3-5 pp) for Dr. Black, 3 for Dr. Shohet (each 3-5 pages), and 2 for Dr. McLaughlin (each 7-10 pages).  All papers need to include detailed textual work as their evidence, but must be thesis-driven:  that is, organized by your arguments about the texts. As we work toward synthetic analysis and evolving argumentation, some of these papers include associated preliminary or follow-up writing submitted to one or more instructors; some papers include rewrites.  Additionally, you will be asked to undertake frequent informal writing: daily journal questions for some components of the course, responses to field trips, peer-response exercises, etc.  Late written work is not normally accepted without prior arrangement.

EXAMS: At the end of each unit (Medieval, Early Modern I, Early Modern II), there will be a two-part exam.  The first part is written, asking you short-answer-type questions about information and texts of the course.  The second part is oral.  For the oral portion, we will assign you small groups in which you will prepare questions and analysis of texts we provide that we have not discussed in class; in your oral exams, we also will ask you further questions about these texts and their relations to other course materials.  The oral exams will evaluate your ability to formulate useful questions about texts from our periods and disciplines as well as to discuss course texts and issues.

EVALUATION. You will receive three separate grades for your work in Interdisc II; evaluation is coordinated among sections but based on your work in the different disciplines as well.  We are particularly interested in evidence of careful, consistent, thoughtful participation in coursework and engagement with the kinds of analysis we undertake. 

Improvement over the course of the semester gets rewarded: if later papers are substantially better than earlier ones, or if your later exams are better than earlier ones, they can count for more.  Conversely, later work needs to be better than earlier work to receive the same grade.  Grades for papers and exams are based solely on the quality of your work; however, diligence and effort (particularly in conjunction with improvement over the course of the semester) can have some positive effect on your final grade for the course.  

Your grades for each strand breaks down roughly as 60% papers (judged on the basis of clarity and strength of argument, incisiveness of interpretation, and thoroughness of response to comments on earlier papers or drafts); 25% participation (journals, discussion, peer-response sheets, etc., judged on the basis of thorough engagement, consistency of preparation, and increase in skills); and 15% exams (judged on the basis of factual accuracy, careful reading, and interpretive acumen).

COPIES OF WORK   Please keep copies of all the work that you submit for the entire semester.  A lot of paperwork will be flying around and we may lose copies of some of your assignments.  You will be responsible for producing a new copy if necessary.

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY      We will be holding students in this class to the strictest standards of academic integrity.  All papers must have scrupulous documentation of any sources you use.  Individual instructors will give more detailed instructions on the mechanics of doing this; in all cases, all work must be documented in such a way that the instructors can easily tell what is your work and what is taken from, or derived from, another source.  If you have any questions, ask! You also are expected to follow all other rules regarding acceptable and unacceptable collaboration on any given assignment.  Again, please ask for clarification if you are the least bit unsure.

Students with Learning Disabilities. Villanova seeks to make reasonable academic accommodations for students with disabilities. If you are a person with a disability, please contact me outside of class, and make arrangements to register with the Learning Support Office (x 9 5636; nancy.mott@villanova.edu).

TEXTS:

UNIT I: THE MIDDLE AGES

Anon., “The Battle of Maldon,” “The Dream of the Rood” (handout)
---. Beowulf, trans. Heaney (Norton)
Anselm. Basic Writings (Oxford)
Thomas Aquinas. Introduction to Thomas Aquinas, ed. Pegis (Modern Library)
Benedict. Rule of St. Benedict
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (Norton)
Dante, Inferno, canto IV (reserve)

Also: Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass (Knopf) 

UNIT II: EARLY MODERNITY THROUGH THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Francis Bacon, essays (reserve)
John Calvin, Institutes, selections (reserve)
Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier (reserve)
René Descartes. Discourse and Meditations (Hackett)
John Donne, poems (reserve)
Thomas Hobbes. Leviathan (Hackett)
Martin Luther, Three Treatises (Fortress)
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince and the Discourses (Modern Library)
Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus (Signet)
Michel de Montaigne, Essays (Dover)
Claudio Monteverdi, Orfeo (reserve)
Francesco Petrarch, selected poems (reserve)
---. Secretum (reserve)
William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (Washington Square P)
Philip Sidney, poems (reserve)
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, poems (reserve)
Thomas Wyatt, poems (reserve)

Also: Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife (Knopf)
          Isaac Bashevis Singer, Satan in Goray

UNIT III: EARLY MODERNITY: SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES

Aphra Behn, Oroonoko (Norton)
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (Oxford)
Glueckel von Hameln, Memoirs (Random House)
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Penguin)
David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Hackett)
_________. essays (reserve)
John Locke. A Letter Concerning Toleration (Hackett)
_________. Reasonableness of Christianity and Discourse on Miracles (Stanford).
_________. Second Treatise of Government (Hackett)
John Milton, Paradise Lost (Penguin)
W.A. Mozart, The Magic Flute (reserve)
Thomas Paine, Common Sense (Penguin)
Blaise Pascal, Pensees
Rousseau, Social Contract (reserve)
Voltaire, selections from Philosophical Dictionary (reserve)

Also: Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass (Knopf)
         John  Rogers, The Matter of Revolution: Science, Poetry, and Politics in the Age of Milton. (Cornell, 1996), chapter one (reserve)

UNIT I: MIDDLE AGES

final exam: written test Sat 5/7, 10:45 am
oral finals TBA during exam period